Connecticut western news., 1887-11-23
PATAGONIA.
A South American Country That
 Exists Only in Name.
How It's Marauding Savages
 Were Severely Punished.

gonia. It appears on our geographies now as "a drear and uninhabitable waste, upon which herds of wild horses and cattle grazc, that are hunted for their acsh by few bands of savage Indians of mmense stature" I am quoting froui hooI- book published in 1886, and iA hommon use in this country. The same geography gives similar informa- ton about ''the Argentine Confedera- tion." It makes the Argentines roar with rage to call their country "the Argentine Confederation. A bitter, bloody war was fought to wipe that name off the map, but our publishers still insist upon keeping it there. It is not confederation; it is Nation, with big "N," like ours-one and inseparable, united we stand, divided we fall, and all that sort of thing---the Argentine Republic. To call it anything else is an insult to the patriots who fought to make itso, and reflection upon our own in- telligence.
 Several years ago Patagonia was di- vided between Chili and the Argentine Republic, the Ministers from the United States to those two countries doing the carving. The summits of the Cordll- leras were fixed as the boundary lines. Chili took the Strait of Magellan and the strip along the Pacific coast between the mountains and the sea, and the Argentine Republic the pampas, the archipelago of Tierra del Fuego being divided between them. Sine, the partition ranchmen have been push ing southward with great rapidity, and now the vast territory is practically occupied. There are no more wild cattle or horses there than in Kansas, and the dreary, uninhabited wastes of Patagonia have gone into oblivion with the s'Great American Desert" The remnant of vast tribe of aborigines still occupies the interior, but the Indian problem of the Argentine Republic was solved in q summary way. There was considerable annoyance on the frontier from bands of rowing savages, who used to come north in the winter-time, steal cattle, rob. and despoil, and the out posts of civilization we're not safe. General Roca was sent with brigade of cavalry to the frontier, to prevent this sort of thing East and west acr oss the territory runs the Rio Negro, a swift, turbid stream like the Missouri, with high banks. Fifty miles or so from the mountains the river makes a turn in its course, and leaves narrow pathway through which everything that enters or leaves Pata- gonia by land must go. Across this pass of fifty miles General Roca dug a ditch twelve feet deep and fifteen feet wide. The Indians, to the number ol several thousand, were north when the work was done, raiding the settlements. As spring came they turned to go south as usual, in long caravan, with thei1 stolen horses and cattle. Roca gal loped around their rear, and drove then night and day before him. When they reached the ditch they became bewil dered for they could not cross it, an6 after few days of slaughter the rem nant that survived surrendered, ano were distributed through the army a. soldiers, while the women were sent into a semi-slavery among the ranchmen they had robbed. The dead animals an6 men were buried together in the ditcf and there has been no further annoy ance from Indians on the frontier.
 The few that remain seldom com, northward, but remain around Punt. Arenas, the only settlement in the Strait hunting the ostrich and other wild game
 trading the skins for whiskey, and mak
 ing themselves as wretched as possible
 The robes they wear are made of tn,
 skins of the guanaco, a species of tn
 llama, and the breasts of young ostriches
 There is nothing prettier than an ostricl
 robe, but each one represents the slaugh
 ter of from sixteen to twenty youn!
 birds, and they are getting rare and ex
 pcnsive as the birds are being extermi
 hated, as our buffaloes have been.
 [Harper's Magazine.